


The Only One Who Could Ever Reach Me

by nevermindirah



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Jewish Bucky Barnes, M/M, Preacher's Kid Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-03
Updated: 2014-09-09
Packaged: 2018-02-15 23:35:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2247582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevermindirah/pseuds/nevermindirah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dusty Springfield's "Son of a Preacher Man", as told by the rabbi's son, Bucky Barnes.</p><p>All Bucky Barnes wanted was to be in his bedroom by himself, with the door closed, with no noise, with his phone and his homework and a freshly-microwaved burrito. But no, he had to be late leaving campus, and now he and his burrito were caught in the middle of his mom's Interfaith Environmental Action meeting.</p><p>He was trying to get himself and his burrito to the stairs when he found himself struck motionless.</p><p><em>Damn</em>, Bucky thought. <em>Little Steve Rogers grew up.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. January

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on [tumblr](http://nevermindirah.tumblr.com/) for live updates and headcanons and feelings!

All Bucky Barnes wanted was to be in his bedroom by himself, with the door closed, with no noise, with his phone and his homework and a freshly-microwaved burrito. But no, he had to be late leaving campus, and now he and his burrito were caught in the middle of his mom's Interfaith Environmental Action meeting.

Rabbi Barnes's house was packed once a month with clergy and activists and college students, had been for several years now. Bucky never stuck around for the meetings. He was proud of his mom, for a lot of reasons and not least for finding good use for the too-big house after his dad had died. But nights like these had him questioning living at home while he was in college.

He was trying to get himself and his burrito to the stairs when he found himself struck motionless.

 _Damn_ , Bucky thought. _Little Steve Rogers grew up._

Bucky had known Steve Rogers in passing their whole lives. Bucky would see Steve every so often at his mom's various interfaith activities, more often once Steve started coming with his dad to his mom's IEA meetings.

He'd hovered in the background of Bucky's adolescence, the picture of a well-adjusted preacher's kid. They were never close enough for Bucky to know how Steve had rebelled -- if you're raised by people of the cloth, you rebel, you just do. Bucky's was pretty tame, bacon cheeseburgers and non-participation in his mom's ever-present activism. Bucky suddenly found himself desperate to know about Steve, rebellion and otherwise.

Steve was a little guy, always had been. He'd been shaped pretty much the same since age 15, when it appeared that someone had taken him by the scruff of his neck and pulled him skywards a few inches without bothering to add a single new ounce to him.

Only now that 5'5" body wore a grown man's face. Bucky struggled not to stare at _that jawline_.

Steve saw Bucky awkwardly standing by the fireplace and turned an easy smile on him. Suddenly it seemed to matter a great deal to Bucky what his face looked like and in what particular way he was holding his burrito. A fucking burrito of all things to be holding right then.

"Hey!" Steve said as he came up to an increasingly flustered Bucky.

"Hey --"

"Good to see you," he said easily. "Lot of people here -- I haven't been to one of these in a while."

"Yeah, it's a lot." Bucky looked to the side, casting about for something better to say.

Steve turned to stand beside Bucky, backs to the wall, and looked out at the two dozen or so people mingling as if the scene weren't the most overwhelming thing he'd experienced all month. Bucky accidentally brushed his arm against Steve's. He quickly pulled away and shifted the hot burrito to his other hand.

"Oh, you're trying to go eat dinner -- here, let's see if we can get you around the crowd." Steve craned his neck around, looking for a relatively clear path, then put his hand on Bucky's shoulder and guided him around the perimeter of the living room to the doorway.

The doorway to the foyer, which included both the stairs and the front door.

"Young masters Barnes and Rogers! Wonderful to see you both," said Reverend Pierce, blocking Bucky's way. Steve felt Bucky's shoulders tense up.

Steve stepped up beside Bucky and smiled his politest smile. "Good evening, Reverend. Bucky was just telling me that he's got a big project due this week so unfortunately he can't stay to chat." Steve clapped Bucky's shoulder gently and dropped his hand. "But my dad mentioned he had something to ask you about -- how about we go find him?"

"Of course, lead the way. Peace be with you, Bucky," Rev. Pierce said before turning to the living room.

Steve caught Bucky's eye and was rewarded with a grateful smile.

Steve spent the meeting feeling unusually warm.

"Nothing," Steve later responded to his dad's question of what was wrong as they walked to Dr. Rogers's car. He kept his eyes straight ahead and pretended he hadn't been caught sneaking glances back at the Barnes's house, and particularly the window to the second story bedroom.

* * *

"I swear to god Nat, he kept looking back at the house on his way out! I'm not making this up!"

Natasha smirked down at her friend from high atop her perch spotting Bucky as he bench pressed.

"Yeah, he was looking at the wrong window, but I doubt he has a crush on my 50-year-old mother. Seriously, he looked back at the house like 5 times." Bucky couldn't see Natasha raise her eyebrow, but he knew her pretty well, and he knew he deserved some judging. "Yes, I know, I'm a total creeper for staring out my window waiting to see some guy walk out of my house. But he was so -- nice, Nat!"

"You could do with some more nice in your life," she said.

"That's what I'm saying!"

Bucky focused on his reps for a minute.

"He was so smooth," Bucky said with effort, "about everything." _Gasp._ "It's like he could smell how much," Bucky grunted, "I hate Pierce. And I was just," Bucky blew out a long breath and drew in another, "this idiot --"

Natasha said, "Ok, you are not allowed to talk about your feelings while you bench press. Up."

"Yes Captain," Bucky snorted as he lifted up to rack the bar. "But is this even possible? He's so _polite_ , that's so not my type. Sometimes a guy's just randomly nice to you while being unexpectedly hot, right?"

"Yes, sometimes people are nice to each other without a strategy behind it." Natasha paused, as if weighing her options. "But why would some guy come across that smooth if he didn't have a goal in mind?"

Bucky whimpered and threw his arms out dramatically, arching his back against the bench. Natasha graced him with a rare, real smile.

"You're smitten. It's cute. Your usual type sucks half the time anyway. Now get up, it's my turn."

"I'm gonna get smited, more like," Bucky said as he stood up and moved around so he could spot Natasha. "Ugh, with my luck he's one of those straight but not narrow types, super well-meaning and aggressively pro-homo but it just ends up confusing and disappointing when he's not actually into it."

Natasha rolled her eyes up at him. "Well, you could always kiss him and find out." At Bucky's look she added, "or stare at him awkwardly until he either kisses you or runs away. Here, hand me the bar before your face falls off from blushing."

Bucky did as he was told and Natasha started to lift, same weights he was using. She said after a while, falsely innocent, "Do you know anything about him beyond his face and his ass and who his dad is?"

Bucky glared at her. "Are you suggesting that I google him? Because I kinda already did that and his name is common as hell."

"I'm suggesting," Natasha said with an eye roll, "that you arrange to run into him. Wear a cleavagey shirt and bat your eyelashes or whatever boy equivalent. Like, run into him in a way that gives you an excuse to casually touch him."

Bucky laughed at that. "Bless you, evil genius! An actual idea for once." Natasha huffed sharply and Bucky reached over for the bar, but she recovered herself and continued. After a few reps, Bucky said, "Well he'll probably be at the next meeting. Wanna help me pick out the right shirt to wear when I happen to go to the meeting, completely unsuspiciously, for the first time in my life?"

Natasha picked up speed as if celebrating victory. "Sure, nerd. Maybe a nice oversized tshirt with a math joke on it."

Bucky scoffed, then feinted walking away towards the wall of really heavy weights.

"Are there math jokes about buttsex? We could have one specially made for the occasion," Natasha said, grinning through her sweat.


	2. February

Deborah Barnes looked up from her notebook and started a little at the display on the clock. She grabbed the stack of flyers from the corner of her desk and locked her office door, then paused to holler up the stairs, "Bucky, can you come help me set up?" 

"Yeah, gimme a minute," he shouted back.

Deborah set her flyers on the blessedly already clear dining room table and went through to the kitchen. Homemade hamantaschen were laid out on wire racks across most of the kitchen counter space. She grabbed one and took a small bite as she walked over to turn on the radio.

She opened a cabinet door and was reaching up for a large serving plate when she heard her son come in. "Thanks, honey, can you help me plate these up?"

She paused before handing him the plate. "Are you going out later?"

"No," Bucky said, fake nonchalant, and reached for the plate. He was wearing his tightest skinny jeans and a tank top, white with pastel stripes, the kind boys these days seemed to wear clubbing, and possibly a little bit of eyeliner.

"Okay, just put them out on the dining table with a pitcher of ice water and the party cups. Shoot, where'd I put that bag of napkins?"

A few moments later, Deborah said from the depths of the pantry, "You're getting a lot better at eyeliner, honey."

Bucky smiled sheepishly to the cookies. "Thanks, mom. I learned from the best."

"I'm glad you have someone in your life to teach you about makeup. How is Natasha?" Deborah emerged from the pantry and handed the bag of napkins to her son. "You should bring her around for dinner again sometime. I like that girl, she's a good influence."

Bucky laughed. "Yeah, she's good, I'll ask her."

"And the hamantaschen turned out great, thank you for making them," she said, lifting the crumbly last bite of her cookie.

"Sure thing. I'm keeping some for myself, to protect me from those awful sacrilegious triangle-shaped sugar cookies the dining hall is liable to start throwing at us any day now."

Deborah patted her son on the shoulder as he crossed over to set the plate and napkins in the dining room.

When Bucky came back into the kitchen he found his mom dancing around as she cut up carrot sticks. Dusty Springfield was warbling out of the radio. "Turn it up! I love this song," she said.

Bucky had already crossed the room and turned up the radio volume by the time it hit him. 

_The only one who could ever reach me_  
 _Was the son of a preacher man_  
 _The only boy who could ever teach me_  
 _Was the son of a preacher man_  
 _Yes he was, he was_

He blushed furiously and turned his back to his mom, hiding by the opposite counter when his eyes landed on the bread box. A sandwich! You can't spill your deepest darkest secrets when you're eating a sandwich.

"Ooh, yes he was," Deborah sang, full-throated for all she was off-key. She caught a glimpse of her son's bright red ears as he reached into the fridge. "Anything you want to tell me about?"

"No," Bucky said immediately, even less convincingly than before.

Deborah grinned to herself and continued chopping.

* * *

Bucky stood at the edge of the room, near the kitchen door, for 24 whole minutes. He gracefully accepted compliments on his cookies, at least he thought so, grunting as politely as he could. But he couldn't help getting agitated as the minutes ticked by with no sign of Steve.

If he wore something boy-cleavagey to two meetings in a row his mom would totally figure out what was going on.

Finally, people were sitting down to get started, and Bucky really didn't want to sit through 90 minutes of this. He slunk into the kitchen, where he was glad to find he'd left his urban planning textbook.

Several minutes later, while Bucky was in the bathroom and couldn't hear the front door, Dr. Rogers and Steve slipped into the meeting with quiet apologies.

Maybe half an hour went by and Bucky was deep into his homework, two soda cans and a plate of sandwich crumbs littered across the table.

He heard voices raised through the closed dining room door. Then all of a sudden he was face to face with Steve.

Steve, who was glaring daggers and turning red.

Bucky was not above capitalizing on alone time with Steve even in this state. "Hey, are you ok?"

"That Pierce guy is a real asshole," Steve said, low. Then he seemed to realize where he was and looked at Bucky. "Sorry for saying that. He just said something really homophobic."

"Gross," Bucky said. "I've heard shit like that from him before though. Baptists, you know?"

Steve just glared off to the side and breathed deeply, narrow chest aggressively punching in and out.

"Sorry," Bucky said, ducking his head. Not the right time to shit-talk Christians, as he didn't actually know Steve that well. "Sorry. You're welcome to chill here for a while. Want a soda? You can rant more if you need to, I don't mind."

Steve looked at him again and a smile washed over his face. "Yeah, thank you," he said. He walked over to the table and pulled out the chair next to Bucky.

"Actually," Steve said, leaning against the back of the chair, "would you like to go for a walk? It's beautiful out, and it'd be nice to catch up with you. It's been what, over a year?"

If Steve noticed that it took Bucky several years and a lot of fishmouthing to respond, he didn't say anything about it. He just kept smiling.

"Yeah!" Bucky said once he'd composed himself. "Here, we can go out through the back patio, they won't even hear us." Bucky stood up and felt in his pocket for his keys, not blushing, absolutely not blushing. He continued not to blush as Steve followed him through the back door.

"Thanks man," Steve said.

"Sure, I could do with a study break. The last time I saw you was, what, Hanukkah a year ago?" Bucky had spent a great deal of time lying on his bed puzzling this out recently, but he thought he managed to say it offhand.

"Yeah, I kinda hermited for a while after my semester abroad," Steve said, ducking his head as they turned onto the alley.

"Where'd you go? I mean, when you went abroad."

"Barcelona," Steve said, grinning into the dark. "It was fantastic. I learned tons, spent hours in museums sketching Picassos and Dalís -- one of my teachers over there, Dr. Erskine, got me set up with a weekend fellows program at El Prado in Madrid. My friends and I ran through France and Italy and a little bit of Germany a few weekends too. Ugh it was so cool. I miss it. Took me a while to get back into things here after."

"Yeah? That sounds amazing, I can see it being hard to come back to this boring place after."

"Oh I like this town fine. It's more just," Steve blew out a heavy breath. "I, it sped up the usual college kid 'who am I' identity stuff. I met this great girl while I was out there, Peggy, and we tried to make it work long-distance for a stupid long time after I came back here and she went back to England. We're finally to a point where we're just good friends who used to make out and now Skype platonically sometimes. She has a bad habit of calling me on stuff I'm not ready to talk about yet. I pretty much hid in studio most of last semester, thinking about stuff."

"That's a lot," Bucky said quietly. He'd been drinking in Steve's profile as he talked. But now he felt Steve's eyes on him like a spotlight, as if time to ante up.

"And I totally hear you on the 'who am I' stuff," Bucky said after a few paces. "Growing up is weird."

"What do you mean?"

"Well -- nah, it's silly," Bucky said.

"No pressure, say whatever you want."

"Yeah." They walked in silence for a ways. "So, like, I'm doing engineering, right? I really like it -- I'm gonna get to build what I grew up reading about. But do you look at me and think, that guy, he's a scientist? I don't even know if I want people to think that. I don't know."

"People think all kinds of stuff. What are you worried about, nerd in a lab coat stereotypes ruining your street cred with the ladies?"

Bucky froze. If this weren't a chance on a silver platter, he wouldn't know what was. Hell, this was safer than hauling Steve over and kissing him.

"Well, guys, but kinda. And I don't know, can I have street cred with myself?"

Steve looked over at him with something like pride -- admiration, maybe, or -- fuck, was that hope? Was Bucky projecting? _Is this guy fishing for me to out myself?_

"It sounds like you do have street cred with yourself."

Bucky smiled big at that, disbelieving and genuine.

"I guess."

"So what do you like to do when you're not wearing a lab coat?" Was Steve blushing? "You know, for fun?"

Bucky thought, _Is Steve blushing? Shit, don't fuck this up, say something cool, say something --_

"Um," Bucky said. "I go to the gym a lot."

"I was starting to wonder if you liked fun," Steve said. "Kinda still wondering, actually."

"Ok, joker!" Bucky let his jaw hang open, and totally not because he wanted to swallow Steve whole, smirk first. "My friend Natasha is this badass who's always showing me up. I keep her around because she's mostly nice about being better than me at everything, lifting and school and pretty much everything else. She always knows about the good dance parties. I'm not exactly a club kid, I just like dancing. I guess we go out a lot." Feeling brave, Bucky stopped walking and looked Steve in the eye. "Does that count as liking fun?"

Steve met his gaze easily. Bucky couldn't help feeling like Steve was doing math about him in his head, filling in a rubric. "I suppose that does count."

They picked back up walking. For better or worse, their loop around the neighborhood had brought them back within 50 feet of Bucky's house.

"Hey," Steve said, "do you ever go to the queer student group parties?"

Bucky looked over at Steve's profile for about the 50th time that night. He looked tense -- that was new. "Yeah, I go sometimes. They're alright." Bucky's heart felt like it was about to leap out of its chest and hitch a piggy-back ride on Steve's left ear. "You know, I'm a jerk who never asked you if you like fun."

The look Steve turned on him could only be described as smoldering. _Wait, what?_ "Yeah, I like fun."

Bucky breathed in and out perfectly normally, thank you. "Any particular kind?"

Steve chuckled, smoldering replaced by self-deprecating. "You can probably guess, art kid stuff. My best friend Sam is in theater, so I go to all his shows. And I really like Interfaith Environmental Action. I wouldn't say I go to protests and stuff for fun exactly, more I want to contribute something useful to the world, but I do like a good protest drum line." Steve huffed out a little laugh, catching Bucky's eyes. "But to break up the stereotype a little, my guilty pleasure is cheesy blockbuster action movies. Especially the ones with interesting explosions and female characters with real characterization."

"Oh you've gotta meet Natasha," Bucky said before he realized. _I swear to god if I get you to hang out with me again and accidentally hook you up with Natasha --_

Steve was grinning at him as they walked up the path to Bucky's house. "Looks like they're still going in there. Do you need to get back to your homework, or do you want to sit on the porch until it wraps up?"

"Sure, I can hang a little more," Bucky said, too quickly to really sell the nonchalance he intended.

"So," Bucky continued as they sat down, "how are your parents?" _Shit, what is wrong with me?_

"Oh they're fine. Glad to see me getting out more, I think. My mom spent weeks trying to teach me how to bake last fall, like she was trying to make me useful hanging around the house all the time. I burned, like, everything. Baking's like her meditation when she comes home from a shift, and there I was cockblocking everything. I know she's glad to see me leaving the house more often these days." Steve bit his lower lip. "You know, in a loving, motherly way."

Bucky couldn't hold in his laughter. "Yeah, if you burned my shit I'd kick you out of my kitchen too!"

"Oh that's right, your mom mentioned you'd made the cookies tonight." Steve added, low, "They were really good."

"Thanks," Bucky said, his laughter fading to a warm smile. "I'd offer to teach you, but maybe I should just give you some Play-Doh to roll out on the kitchen table, protect the real stuff from your, what was it," Bucky breathed, "cockblocking?"

Bucky was not even kidding, he was going to swallow that smirk whole, and Steve was -- Steve was leaning into him, just slightly, but definitely leaning in. Bucky licked his lips and he thought he caught Steve looking at his mouth.

Ok, Steve was definitely looking at his mouth.

And the meeting had definitely just ended. Steve gave him a warm, private look as he stood up, just in time for the door to open to reveal Reverend Fury.

"Dr. Rogers, he's right here," Rev. Fury called behind himself.

Bucky stood up, dusting off his pants, trying to catch Steve's eyes again. _Did that really just happen? No, stay --_

Steve shot him a look before he turned to head back inside. Bucky's heart jumped out and ran after Steve, leaving Bucky to follow with a quiet, "goodnight, sir," to Rev. Fury.

* * *

When Sam Wilson got out of rehearsal later that night, he found the following on his phone.

_Steve: I TALKED TO HIMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM_


End file.
